It's inevitable like death and taxes. Should some murderous tyrant or
other appear on the world scene and flaunt his dirty deeds in front of
the international community, then the "negotiate an agreement"
crowd crawls out from under the rocks to denounce any talk of using military
force to reign in the aggressor.

You know all the mindless slogans by now: "Give peace a chance,"
"Negotiations not war," "Diplomacy not threats," "Peace
in our time," "I never had sex with that woman!" Well,
maybe not the latter. But speaking of America's orally-fixated ex-president,
the Clinton presidency unadmirably demonstrates all the wishful thinking,
procrastination and irresponsibility involved in depending on diplomats
to "negotiate" the pages and pages of high-fallutin' hot air
called "international agreements" these days, as well as the
dire consequences of such foreign-policy sophistry.

This reflexive "negotiate an agreement" sensibility is just
another bi-product of today's liberal-left mind set, shaped and formed
by the experience of coming up with last-minute settlements in labor negotiations,
engaging in legal horse trading in plea bargaining for guilty criminals,
and negotiating "non-partisan" political compromises (translated
sellouts) in today's legislatures.

The problem is that what works in a democratic domestic context may not
work quite so well in the pursuit of international peace. Reigning in
ruthless rogue states requires anything but the endless bargaining, compromise
and sellout of principles that works so well in negotiating with labor
unions to buy "labor peace," in hammering out plea bargains
to clear the courts of expensive trials, and in forging political "compromises"
to pander to special interest groups.

The next Peace Prize winner?

Negotiating... and negotiating... and then negotiating even more, to
generate reams of paper filled with lofty language and obfuscating legal
terms, may be appropriate for settling a truckers' strike. Allowing the
latest billionaire business felon caught with his hand in the cookie jar
to cop a plea may allow the courts to run more efficiently. And political
compromise may help the trains run on time, as well as insure re-election.
But it simply will not suffice when the safety of entire civilian populations
is at stake, when the basic principles that underlie our way of life are
under attack, or when the forces of evil threaten to rum amok.

Which brings us back to the craven Clinton administration where talk,
talk, talk -- and meaningless written words (and then more written words)
in the form of accords, frameworks and treaties -- was the solution for
every international crisis (unless the president was under threat of impeachment,
in which case a quick missile attack on a pharmaceutical factory in the
Sudan might be justified to deflect public attention away from presidential
misdeeds).

So under the inept foreign-policy reign of Bill Clinton, we had the much-ballyhooed
negotiated agreements for "peace" in the Middle East, Northern
Ireland and the Korean peninsula. And of course, as we know now, all these
negotiated settlements totally unravelled, along with a lot of Nobel Peace
Prize-winning diplomatic sleight of hand.

Everyone knows what happened to the Oslo Accords between Israel and the
Palestinians. To see the latest results, you just have to check the news
pages of your morning newspaper to read about the latest Palestinian terrorist
bombing in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, or the latest incursion of the Israeli
army into Jenin or Ramallah.

Oh and what about the Clinton-inspired settlement of long-standing grievances
between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland? Sorry, bad news
there too. Britain has again been forced to suspend the local Northern
Ireland assembly in which Protestants and Catholics agreed to share power
as part of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement brokered by Bill Clinton's slippery
special envoy, George Mitchell.

One of the conditions of the Mitchell-brokered power-sharing agreement
was that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) would disarm and end its terroristic
ways. And what a shocking surprise. Despite signing onto the agreement,
the IRA has still not turned over its weapons. It has continued to support
the international terror industry by training Colombia's FARC guerrillas.
And now comes more recent news that police raids have uncovered evidence
that leaders of Sinn Fein, the political face of the IRA, stole top-secret
British intelligence documents and continued to be involved in the planning
of terrorist acts.

The final coup de gras to the Clinton legacy of negotiated peace? North
Korea has admitted that it blatantly violated its "Agreed Framework"
with the Clinton administration to dismantle its nuclear-weapons program,
in return for billions of dollars in American aid and U.S. assistance
in building two non-weapon nuclear reactors for generating electrical
power for North Korea's crumbling infrastructure. According to the recent
shameless admission by the North Koreans, they took the money and built
weapons of mass destruction anyway. So much for the healing power of international
jaw-jawing.

The bottom line? Bill Clinton obsequiously deferred to the vociferous
"negotiate a treaty" crowd and indeed gave peace a chance. And
now we're a lot closer to war in the Middle East, sectarian violence in
Northern Ireland, a nuclear conflagration in the Korean peninsula, and
-- the bonus prize! -- decimation of Hawaii and Alaska by nuclear-tipped
long-range missiles launched from Pyongyang.

So much for the lofty "peace in our time" diplomatic spin of
weak-kneed internationalists such as Bill Clinton (and Jimmy Carter).
So much for the healing powers of engagement, negotiation and international
diplomacy.

Thanks to such futile "peacemaking" efforts, the world is simply
a more dangerous place.

Murray Soupcoff is the author of 'Canada 1984' and a former radio
and television producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He
also was Executive Editor of We Compute Magazine for many years, and is
now the Managing Editor of the popular conservative Web site, Iconoclast.ca.